‘Watch out, Trump will start a trade war! Protectionism will lead to economic ruin – free trade with no tariffs is the way to a nation’s wealth!’

Well, thats the cry we are hearing  from virtually every quarter, and certainly it is the politically correct viewpoint of our leaders in Australia. Doesn’t that make you a little uneasy? It does me, and maybe thats because I have been around a long time and have a reasonable memory.

Now, most of you know I am a pom, as well as an Australian. I can remember the time when my home town in the UK hummed with activity – countless cotton mills employed many people and Lancashire cotton goods were exported worldwide. Now, no cotton, no mills, many empty houses and too many unemployed. Where do cotton goods come from today ? Anywhere, Egypt – India – Pakistan – any countries where wages are lower and the standard of living less than in the UK.

Then there was steel. Huge steel works in many places, churning out UK steel for British cars, ships, washing machines – you name it. Gradually they closed down, til now the few steel plants left face extinction. Why?  Because cheap steel from ’emerging nations’ makes UK steel unsaleable.

Then I came to Oz and bought the iconic Australian vehicle – the Holden car. No more. Australia stopped making Holdens. And Fords, and the rest. Australian made cars could not compete against the price of cars made in the ’emerging nations’.

That’s why Trump became President. Too many people in the American rust belt remembered much the same, and longed for someone who would level the playing field – make trade a little fairer by placing a tariff on imported goods which undercut the American made equivalent because their makers accepted much lower wages.

This effect was may have been made even more dangerous by certain command economies which could see what effect such goods were having on the West and could control the price of those goods to undermine strategic Western industries.

So Trump has a point which gains little mention in our left driven media. But where any State is losing out to the tune of lost industries we have to be suckers to swallow ‘free trade’ with no tariffs. The trick is to look at our overall trade balance with any one country and aim to keep it balanced and fair. If every country did that, fairness and justice would prevail and no country would be using ‘slave’ labour to gain an advantage in sales to another country. A pipe dream?  Maybe, in the present. But change is coming because, believe it or not, Jesus Christ is coming back, maybe sooner than you think, when world trade will still occur, but at His just command, Psalm 103:6,  ‘The LORD works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed,’   and Isaiah 56:1, ‘Thus says the LORD: “Keep justice, and do righteousness, for soon my salvation will come, and my righteousness be revealed.’